Category Archives: Travel

The problem with self-employment is that if you’re not careful you can find yourself feeling like you can’t stop – if you’re not working, then you’re marketing and doing all the admin that comes with running a business. So I made a decision the other week that I would take a day off, and actual full day off, on a weekday too, and took myself off on a day trip out. It wasn’t totally a day off from photography though as I decided to take a trip to Lacock Abbey and village, near Chippenham, which is the place where William Henry Fox Talbot produced one of the first (if not the first) photographic negative. Although I’ve been a photographer now for nearly 20 (yes, 20!) years, I’ve never got around to visiting Lacock, and as I now live around an hours drive away it was time I made the trip.

The Latticed Window – replica camera and negative

Lacock Abbey was the family home of William Henry Fox Talbot, and is now owned and maintained by the National Trust. Inside the main entrance there is a fascinating small museum dedicated to Fox Talbot and the early days of photography – I found it interesting to hear that he started his experiments in capturing and image due to the fact that he couldn’t draw or paint as well as his wife and daughter. I also got into photography as I’m pretty rubbish at drawing, so photography is one way of creating without having to try and learn to paint! The museum also holds some interesting items and images related to photography over the years since Fox Talbot created his images, including a gold Nikon camera!

Whilst I was there, there was also an exhibition upstairs in the museum entiled “Drawn to the Land” with images by Sophie Gerrard, documenting 6 women living and working in the most remote parts of Scotland. Some stunning images, and I ended up chatting to a lovely couple and giving them a few hints and tips on photography whilst we wandered around looking at Sophies images 🙂

Wandering around the Abbey, it’s a beautiful place, and of course the part I really wanted to see was the lattice window, made famous as the subject of the oldest negative in existence.

It was very strange to be stood in the same spot as Fox Talbot, and to think that if this invention had turned out differently, who knows what job I would be doing, and to think that from this point back in 1835, came the life of images we have today. Photography and all things that have evolved from it have advanced so rapidly, this photo below (grabbed quickly on my mobile phone) is an interesting representation of who far we’ve come, we take so many more photos in 30 seconds, than were taken in the whole of the 1800’s. Everyone has a camera in their pocket, and the quality is getting better with each new phone that comes out. The photo below was taken on my Samsung Galaxy S6 phone – not bad, eh?

It was quite something standing there, looking at the same window, and taking the same photo that was taken all those years ago.

The Abbey itself is such a lovely place, there’s so much to see, not only the furnished family rooms, but also the unfurnished abbey rooms, which open out into the cloisters. I found it interesting, reading some of the signs around the place, that some of the external walls were taken out in the 1800’s to create a romantic ruin which opened up onto the main grounds. These walls have since been replaced, but I can imagine how beautiful it must have all looked.

After a walk around the Abbey itself I also took a stroll through the grounds, which were looking beautiful as all the crocus were coming out, the daffodils and snowdrops were still around just about. There were signs that in a few weeks it could be bluebell central – maybe I should book myself another day off!

Below are a couple of panoramas I shot whilst there, well worth a quick spin!

One of the best bits about coming out of the RAF is that I get to live with my husband in his home town of Weston-super-Mare. I first started coming to Weston after I met my now husband, just after the old pier burnt down in late 2008. Since that time a lot of work has gone on on the seafront, the new Grand Pier was built and opened a couple of years ago, areas in front of the pier have been pedestrianised, there’s new restaurants and play areas for kids, and there’s a big wheel, carousel and chair-o-planes right on the Beach Lawns. And now the weather has picked up, Weston is coming into it’s own, and it’s fantastic to see how much it’s picked up over the years, and it’s getting more popular by the day.

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Last week I had a day in Bristol, primarily to shoot the Bristol street art along Nelson Street in the city centre. It was a cold day, but good to get out and about with my camera. I hope you enjoy the images!

A closer image of the building where it looks like the images on the wall has been created by chemically cleaning the years of grim off, to reveal the clean masonry underneath. I also like the doves on the knitted “column warmer” echo those on the wall.

Cabots Circus, the newer shopping centre in Bristol.

Cabots Circus, the newer shopping centre in Bristol. I love the roof of this place/

Bristol street art

The images on the walls of this building look like someone has painted them with a chemical which cuts through the years of black grim and reveals the clean masonry underneath – nice!

whilst processing this I spotted the relationship between the mechanical-like creature on the wall, with the motorbikes parked below.

I love the abstract of this one. when you’re up close, all you can see is big blocks of colour, but step back and look properly you can easily spot the superheroes within the image. Certainly eye-catching.

Last night I went out with the intention of trying to get some images of star trails, and possibly catch the asteroid skimming across the night sky, but I’d got all set up in a dark corner of the Worlebury golf course and taken a couple of test shots when some low cloud rolled over and ruined everything! so I decided to take my camera down to the seafront and get a couple of shots of the pier instead, and whilst grabbing a shot from Knightstone I turned and realised how pretty Marine Lake looked at night, which is the image I posted as my 15th Feb “Photogging 365” image last night.

There’s only a couple of images, but I hope you like them.

One of my test shots before the cloud kicked in, looking North-east from the top of Worlebury Hill, that’s Bristol glowing in the distance.

This is the Marine Lake, a seawater swimming pool built in 1927 so that visitors could still swim when the tide was out. the causeway allows seawater over at high tide to refresh the Marine lake.

This is the Marine Lake, a seawater swimming pool built in 1927 so that visitors could still swim when the tide was out.

A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to be sent to the wonderful Falkland Islands for 4 months. I was there in my RAF Photographer role, but had plenty of opportunity to get out and about to see some of the stunning scenery and fantastic wildlife.

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So, it’s not quite as glamorous as some of my previous photographic locations, but it’s still full of photogging potential, and I have come to love my adoptive home town (by marriage) over the years of coming here!

These are a selection of images taken over the past few months, on a variety of subjects from the Grand Pier, to some frosty woodland close-ups – enjoy!

Epic fail

The Royal air force Red Arrows display at the 2012 Weston-super-Mare Grand Pier Air Show